The concept of balance is over-rated. I’m hard-pressed to imagine a single person who consistently lived a “balanced” life the way it’s described in the popular literature today: constant peace (meaning lack of internal conflict), equal amounts of action & rest, work & leisure, consumption & production. That’s a fantasy approaching utopia.
The biology of infants learning to walk is instructive here. All the sensing systems in our body are designed to report the degree of off-balance and the direction. Learning to walk is learning to use the appropriate muscles to push back in the opposite direction of that sensory input. We learn to match the “You’re falling towards the left” signal with the group of muscles to contract that will pull us back towards the right.
You can see a toddler wildly swinging from side to side. Or when someone is learning to ride a bike. After some experience walking and bike riding become a nearly unconscious process of small movements. You and I are doing what the toddler was doing but it’s been decades since we noticed. Our muscles are making a thousand micro-adjustments an hour, all without conscious thought. As we approach our old age this “wobble” walk balance becomes a noticeable problem again.
Instead of “balance,” we need to think and evaluate ourselves on foundations and rhythms. What are your foundational principles and regular practices to keep you grounded? What are your rhythms of work and rest, creating and consuming, listening and speaking, being alone and being together? Pay attention to these matters rather than trying to measure “balance.”
